2012 Grammy Awards

I hadn't heard Adele, but part of that big song sounds just like the beginning of the chorus to Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." To me, anyway.

 

If last night's Grammys taught me anything it's boys are mean.

 

Late to the party, but want to join the chorus and tip the cap.


-- Catching up on a few points, I like(d) Amy Winehouse's music a great deal. I think she was really, really talented. She may have been a better writer than Adele. And she may have been rarer, in some respects, because not many women can sing so beautifully at a lower pitch the way Winehouse could. (It's a different, muskier pitch that Adele, who can do low and high, obviously.) But saying she was "better" than Adele when sober? Meh. More soul maybe. More darkness, and thus, perhaps "interesting and edgy" in ways Adele is not. But it just seems like a contrarian, I'm-a-cool-guy thing to say.

"My heart is broken and I'm sad" is basically the E = MC2 of music. And she still managed to take that universal emotion and reinvent it and make it interesting, in a way that connected with millions of people. Even people desperate to dislike Adele, often just because they want to swim against the current, are finding it hard to do so.

Winehouse got so much credit for how "honest" her writing and singing was, but nothing she did -- not "Love Is A Losing Game," and not "Back to Black" either -- left her as vulnerable as Adele is when she's singing "Someone Like You." There is such an honesty and nakedness to the feelings expressed in that song. I think Winehouse wrote lyrics that came close to expressing sentiment like that, but she couldn't combine it with a performance that left her similarly vulnerable. Even when sober.

--Dave Grohl should be the president of everything. I wish he and Adele could have babies.

--I can't help by like Taylor Swift for some reason. Which makes no sense, because she's so average vocally. Her dress made her look like she was a character in Grapes of Wrath. At least now she's wearing less eye make up, and thus no longer looks like she's an extra in the Broadway version of The Lion King. I just see her at the gateway drug my daughter might use to one day appreciate real music. It's not "good" music, but it's so much better than Rhianna or much of what dominates the female pop charts these days.

--Lastly, Nicki Minaj's nonsense is just babble. Watching her feels like going over to someone's house and they say "Our hyperactive 11-year-old is going to put on a concert! You're going to love it!" Fewer things have made me feel like an old man than that garbage performance. It was like The Phantom Menace, if I may combine multiple threads. So much crap going on, it just felt boring. Great artists are also great editors. She's just someone who jibber jabbers while wearing fancy costumes. With Lady Gaga, I feel like there is a "there" there. With Minaj, I don't get that sense at all. I wish more critics would call her out on it.

 

They're right. It does.

One "all-time" song, and it is an all-timer, saves that album.

That said, Not many really good albums even have an all-time song.

 

I have been somewhat resistant to all the Adele love, but any woman who can drop the word "snot" on worldwide TV...I am suffering post-concussive symptoms from my head hitting the floor to break the swoon.
In response, Rhianna will drop the word "felch" into her next acceptance speech.

 

I agree on Grohl. He just seems like a guy you want to see do well...

I feel the same way about Swift and I don't know why.

 

I was only able to wrest the TV away from our hockey fanbois after the Flyers game, so I started watching just about the time Adele performed. And I thought she was beautiful.

Later when I got home, I caught the early acts on DVD. And it struck me that Bruno Mars is damn talented, somebody who's not going to be a non-entity in 10 years. He has real talent.

Agreed on both counts.

 

I wouldn't say the rest of the album is filler. It's hard to judge the other songs for what they are when the bigger songs are as ridiculously good as they are.

It's like listening to (McCartney tie-in!) Abbey Road. Everything else is so damn good that when you hear "Octopus's Garden" or "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" you think it's just filler, while a lot of other bands would have made that their 3rd best song on an album (Yes, even Octopus's Garden).

Or like (Brian Wilson tie-in!) Pet Sounds. The big stuff is so ridiculous that it makes "Sloop John B" sound like hackery and filler (I was guilty of considering this, admittedly)

I'm not comparing "21" to those albums, but Adele's big hits on that album were game changers. It's hard for the rest of the album to be held to that standard.

 

Bruno Mars pisses me off so much it's insane.

A guy who can perform like that - really in the Jackie Wilson realm of badassery - as well as produce on great songs like "Fuck You!"...and he released "The Lazy Song"? Really?

He should be a guy who is still around in 10 years, if his laziness (sorry) doesn't hold him back.

 

I understand that sentiment. I just kind of like "The Lazy Song."

Man, I'll go as far as to say I thought I saw a little bit of James Brown out there last night.

 

It comes and goes with me, bouncing between a "I kind of can get behind this"-level and a level of hatred I only have for the last bits of The Black Eyed Peas, "Tonight Tonight" by Hot Chelle Rae and almost anything released by Jason DeRulo

 

That's a pretty good observation. I'm feelin' it, right down to the particular performers.